A liquor store sells out of Israeli kosher wine. The Royal Ontario Museum sees a sudden surge in online ticket sales to its Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit.

Israeli kosher wine was hard to find on liquor store shelves after members of the Jewish community turned up in the hundreds to counter a boycott by a group that opposes Israel's Palestinian policies, shortly before Passover.

A liquor store sells out of Israeli kosher wine. The Royal Ontario Museum sees a sudden surge in online ticket sales to its Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit.

Not the outcome one would expect from two recent boycotts meant to protest Israel's handling of the Palestine situation, but that's what happened – thanks to the power of the Internet and a change in course by the Jewish community.

Rather than react to the boycotts with counter-arguments and more rhetoric, the United Jewish Appeal and other groups such as the Jewish Defense League have begun responding to boycotts by urging supporters to buy more of whatever is being boycotted.

"The community feels really empowered by it," says Sally Szuster, a spokeswoman for the UJA Federation of Toronto.

It all began rather innocently.

A call was put out by the Jewish group Not In Our Name, which opposes Israel's Palestinian policies, to boycott Israeli kosher wines in the lead-up to Passover. A protest was organized for outside the Summerhill liquor store the afternoon of April 5 to enlist shoppers.

Before long, emails began circulating among a few members of the Jewish community suggesting that they respond to the boycott by buying their wine at Summerhill.

Canadian Jewish News publisher Donald Carr and his wife, Judy Feld Carr, an Order of Canada member for her work to rescue more than 3,200 Jews from Syria, were among the earliest recipients of the emails, which they forwarded to all of their contacts.

"It became a very big, unstructured email blasting, to the point that it came back to us eight or nine times," says Donald.

By then, the UJA was on board, sending emails to 25,000 of its supporters calling on them to go to the store at the time of the protest specifically to buy Israeli kosher wine.

"Hundreds and hundreds came," says Szuster.

Many of those going to the store to buy wine took part in a counterprotest by pro-Israeli supporters that soon overwhelmed the relatively small original demonstration.

By mid-afternoon, the store had sold out of the 1,500 bottles of Israeli wine it had in stock.

"The community came en masse. Some walked away empty-handed," says Szuster.

The one-time event has now become a favourite response to any boycott call, including an appeal to boycott the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit due to allegations that Israel stole the scrolls – the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible – from the Palestinians.

"It's the most positive way to make a statement," Szuster says.

Carr says he would rather see people respond to boycotts by opening their wallets than by taking part in noisy counterprotests, which he fears just gives more publicity to Israel's critics.

"That approach is infinitely more positive and infinitely more successful than any sort of counterprotest," he says.

The Scrolls email blast was sent April 10, the same day members of Palestine House and the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid picketed outside the ROM to encourage people to boycott the exhibit.

"We want to create a sellout situation at the ROM in the same way we did last spring at the LCBO," the email said. "If they experience a surge in ticket sales today we will have made a strong public statement."

Some 500 tickets to the exhibit were sold that day to UJA supporters.

Szuster says any future email blasts will depend on whether more boycotts are called, but says the Jewish community seems to like the idea.

"It's proven to be a good way to engage the community in a positive way."